San Francisco stadium manages concessions inventory in real time
Customers at San Francisco’s Oracle Park will have enhanced access to concessions products.
The San Francisco Giants Major League Baseball team is deploying the Oracle Micros Simphony Cloud POS solution at its home stadium. The Giants intend to leverage the new POS technology to make it easier for customers to order food and beverage options at concession stands or from their mobile devices, while built-in restaurant business analytics and real-time data access will help Oracle Park improve inventory management.
The venue will leverage Simphony to obtain real-time insights into what is happening across inventory, pricing, and promotions. For example, if a popular promotion leads to an out-of-stock item, it will automatically be reflected on the park's digital menu boards and mobile devices. Conversely, ballpark staff will also be able to see if there is a surplus of a certain food, with the option to run a new promotion to accelerate sales.
As part of this rollout, the team has also moved its disaster recovery system for high-priority data, files and video to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Stadiums go frictionless
In future seasons, Oracle Park will implement self-service customer kiosks and “grab-and-go” frictionless checkout locations. Frictionless shopping is becoming an increasingly popular offering at professional sports venues across the country. For example, Aramark, the exclusive food and beverage provider at Houston’s NRG Stadium, recently opened the venue’s second store featuring Zippin checkout-free technology. Two Ice House Express locations in two different first-level sections of the stadium enable shoppers to tap a credit card to enter a store and then select the items they want.
Amazon, a pioneer of autonomous shopping with its Amazon Go store model in January 2018, offers its leading-edge contactless shopping and payment options at the recently opened Climate Pledge Area in Seattle. Frictionless shopping options at select food and beverage stores within the arena include Just Walk Out, as well as Amazon One palm-based payment.
And the Worcester Red Sox minor league baseball team recently partnered with retail computer vision platform provider Standard AI to retrofit the “WooSox” market store located near centerfield in its Polar Park stadium in Worcester, Mass. The store leverages artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cameras and the cloud to provide a fully autonomous shopping experience.
"From the delicious Crazy Crab Sandwich to our signature Gilroy Garlic Fries, Oracle Park is well-known for its world-class food and beverage program," said Bill Schlough, senior VP and CIO, San Francisco Giants. "Oracle will help us make it faster and easier than ever for fans to enjoy our unique offerings while boosting our operational efficiency, better managing inventory, and reducing costs."
"Maintaining agility in the face of tumultuous market conditions and ever-evolving fan expectations is essential for ballpark operators," said Simon de Montfort Walker, senior VP and GM, Oracle Food and Beverage. "Oracle's transaction platform, Micros Simphony Cloud, helps venues serve fans faster, arms staff with intuitive tech, and automates business operations. With it, Oracle Park can help ensure its fan experience and business performance continues to be one of Major League Baseball's best."